Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/238

 Eloquence at the Bar.

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ELOQUENCE AT THE BAR. SIR JOHN FORTESCUE, says the " Law Times," in his admirable treatise in com mendation of the laws of England, observes: "And in mine opinion it is to be judged for no small point of the bountiful goodness of God that out of the generation of judges, there have hitherto sprung up more states and peers of the realm than out of any other state of men, which, by their own wit and policy, have aspired to great wealth, nobility and honor. Yea, though the state of mer chants surmount the number of judges by many thousands, being men of such singular wealth, that among them commonly there be such as one of them in riches passeth all the judges of the realm." What was true in the days of Henry VI has continued true to the present hour. No state of the realm, not even the diplomatic, the military, or the naval, has in the words of George Canning, contributed, or continues to contribute, so many " fresh streams to the stagnant lake of collected honors" as that of the judges, or rather we should say the bar, for the judges are only the most able, or the most fortunate 'as it may happen, of the legal multitude. But, prolific as the bar has been of men who aspired to and deserved the dignity of the peerage, is it not curious to find that it should have produced so few orators? Is it not strange that, of men exercised all their lives in speaking, no great number should have won high oratorical fame even as advocates, and that a list of individuals singu larly small should have achieved the like renown in Parliament? It is a common observation that, with some few exceptions, the members of the English bar do not exhibit much oratorical power, and that in our courts of law the quality of eloquence is conspicuous chiefly by its absence. This is somewhat surprising when we consider what high rewards are offered in this country for

excellence in public speaking, particularly in the profession of the law. It is possibly not very difficult to assign a reason for the paucity of oratorical talent amongst the modern race of successful practitioners. The prelimjnary education, the course of study, the nature of the practice which opens a career to the junior barrister, are all rather calculated to mar than to make an orator; whilst all those high attainments and qualifi cations which are essential to the scholar and the philosopher, the statesman and the orator, are, if not actually a hindrance, cer tainly no assistance to the junior barrister in his progress to the early emoluments and later dignities of his profession. The hours which should be devoted to these might be more usefully employed by one who has to deal with law as a mechanical art and not a science. But at a time when lawyer and man of learning were synonymous terms, when to enter even upon the study of law required a familiar knowledge of Latin and French, when a better and more liberal education was to be obtained at our inns of court than at any university, or anywhere else in the world, our astonishment cannot fail to be great that, of a body of gentlemen so instructed and so reared as the members of the bar were formerly, so few should have left a name behind them, or bequeathed to us works to which we may turn for even models of forensic eloquence. Fortescue says of the inns of court in his day : " There is in these greater inns (yea, and in the lesser, too), besides the study of the laws, as it were a university or school of all com mendable qualities requisite for noblemen. There they learn to sing and to exercise themselves in all kinds of harmony. There also they practice dancing and other noble men's pastimes, as they used to do which are brought up in the King's house. On